A potentially revolutionary new study has found a way to detect the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease up to 18 years before it sets in.

In a study published in the journal Neurology, 2,125 people with an average age of 73 were given memory and thinking tests every three years over a course of 18 years, according to a Forbes report.

None of them had Alzheimer’s when the survey began, and over the course of this study, about 23 percent of African-American participants and 17 percent of European-American participants developed the debilitating late-age disease that causes the brain to deteriorate.

Scientists found that when individuals scored very low on the memory and thinking tests, they tended to be 10 times more likely to eventually develop Alzheimer’s, suggesting that scientists may have found a way to spot the disease very early.

These results don’t mean that scientists can say for certain that an individual will develop Alzheimer’s, but it does give doctors a chance to warn the patient that they are much more at risk than others to develop dementia due to Alzheimer’s.

In fact, the most important data came early in the test — about 13 to 18 years before research ended. Just one unit of lower performance on the test correlated with an 85 percent increase in risk of developing the disease. This means even subtle declines in the cognitive abilities of the brain herald a much greater future risk.

It also indicates that Alzheimer’s begins to impact patients long before the disease fully sets in, chipping away at one’s ability to remember and perform cognitive tasks decades before it is actually diagnosed.

The results of the study may better inform future studies to help scientists get to the bottom of the disease and figure out ways to prevent it.